Despite the fact that the four members of Fall Out Boy are all in different projects right now (Pete Wentz with The Black Cards, Andy Hurley and Joe Trohman in The Damned Things and Patrick Stump flying solo) it seems like they are constantly asked “When is Fall Out Boy getting back together.”

Now, I generally as a journalist hate seeing this question because it feels like, oh, COME ON. These guys have so much going on for them and they’re obviously dedicating their energy to this OTHER passion right now, so why aren’t you talking about THAT? But both fans and publications continue to grill the guys on when they’ll be reuniting and if they don’t know, well, why don’t they know? Do they hate each other now? Can we start ridiculous rumors about it? CAN WE GET MORE WEBSITE HITS?

Well, now Patrick has put the matter to rest. On his Tumblr, Nervous Breakdance, he stated:

I’d like to formally put this issue to rest. I think I’ve talked about it enough in the past two years and if anything it’s silly talking about hypotheticals in detail. Who knows? I promise I will let everybody know as soon as there are concrete plans or if anything changes, but from here on until Fall Out Boy does have actual news, I’m going to just not talk about it.

That’s not saying anything negative or sour about the ongoing appreciation of Fall Out Boy fans, I’m very honored to be a part of something that has such a dedicated audience, I’ll see all of you if/when the band works on a new record or tour. Until then though, I’m just gonna shut up about it and focus on Soul Punk and hopefully ongoing tour.

Stump isn’t the first member of the band to do something like this, however. Joe created a blogspot FAQ style-post in order to address all of the questions he was getting from fans about Fall Out Boy’s future.

The blogspot has since been purged and deleted, but here’s the gist of it:

The band stopped functioning less than 2 years ago. Not 10 years. Not 20 years. Less than 2 years ago. It hasn’t been an extraordinary amount of time. We did the band for close to 10 years without a break, time to reflect and time to work on other things we’ve been individually keeping on our own back burners.If we did the band again literally right now (right now being 2011) it’d likely not come together in a healthy way that would benefit anyone.

So, with that in mind, can we all agree to not ask these guys about Fall Out Boy for awhile? At least until we get the first rumors that they’re writing again. Then, I’m going to be speculating with the rest of you.